


Tiger Tiger

by lostlenore



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Animal Transformation, Fairy Tale Curses, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 01:13:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10400433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostlenore/pseuds/lostlenore
Summary: The nine lives of Yuri Plisetsky.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Very (very very) loosely an au of Diana Wynne Jones series Chronicles of Chrestomanci. If you're in this for furry shit there will be NONE OF THAT here, keep on truckin.

Otabek Atlin blows into Florida on the tail end of a thunderstorm.

The air around him is heavier and wetter than anything he remembers it ever being during summers in Almaty, like he’s swimming in soup. He didn’t think to bring flying gloves, and his hands are stiff-knuckled and sore around the handle of the broomstick.

Yuri's restless where Otabek has him tucked into the front of his jacket. He keeps hissing at the pelicans that grow bigger and meaner the closer they get to the coast.

“You keep making that face and it’s gonna get stuck like that,” Otabek warns him. He swoops low over the bridge that connects Daytona Beach to Port Orange.

“Watch where you’re flying,” Yuri snaps back. His ears are pressed flat against his skull the way they always seem to be these days, but now Otabek can feel the tiny pinpricks of his claws on Otabek stomach.

They fly over a garish mini-golf course designed to look like a beached pirate ship. The crossbones hangs limply from the plastic-y crow’s nest. Both the course and the street in front of it are deserted.

“Those thing are big enough to eat you,” Otabek warns when Yuri hisses again, softer this time.

“They’ll snap you up and swallow you whole- won’t even have to chew.”

“I could take him,” Yuri insists. “I fought Victor’s dog once, you were there, you remember.” 

Victor’s dog is scared of his own reflection, but Otabek doesn’t bother mentioning that. It’s been a long day. Otabek is miles from home, somehow both freezing and sweating at once, and everything here is strange. New. The whole area smells like breakfast food, and the boulevards are unnaturally still. Florida in October gives Otabek the creeps.

Yuri must pick up on it somehow because the claws retract, and he burrows deeper into Otabek's shirt until his wet nose touches Otabek’s skin. It’s a fucked up mirror of before, when the human, bipedal Yuri would lie next to him and bury his face in Otabek's shoulder, in the crook of his neck.

Wouldn’t it be nice, Otabek thinks, guiding them to the string of hotels rising up from the flat stretch of sand like jagged teeth, to have magic powers be the weirdest part of his life.

New witches like Otabek train where they can. Otabek is supposed to develop new skillsets, be an active part of the community, hone his leadership abilities, a whole laundry list of buzzwords. He isn't, generally speaking, supposed to run off and hide halfway around the world. (Then again, he isn't supposed to be chased in the first place.) Most of all, Otabek isn't supposed to bring along loudmouthed, uncertified witches ready to fight anything that looks at them askance. He brings Yuri anyways.

Otabek washes up at a crumbling motel on the waterfront, a place where all the walls are painted a dusty pink, and the breezeways are open to the watery evening sunlight. The neon sign out front sputters on, a palm tree with two unfortunately placed coconuts.

Yuri snickers from where he’s draped across Otabek's shoulders, tail flicking against the shell of his ear in amusement.

The owner and her son are nice people. They don’t mention how odd it is for a witch Otabek's age to already have a familiar, and they don’t crack jokes about a black cat bringing bad luck. He just exchanges his contract for a set of keys and gets told to be in the lounge by eight for breakfast.

“Oh, and call me Leo,” says the owner’s son, who takes Otabek's trunk with an easy, guileless smile. “We might be East Coast but down here everyone’s more relaxed.”

Otabek has no idea what any of that means, but Leo has a sweet face and looks like he could still be in high school so just nods, and waits for Leo to leave before searching the room for traps.

Somehow they lucked into one of the rooms on the ground floor, with a sliding glass door that opens up right onto the ocean. Once he's satisfied the room is clean he opens it and leaves Yuri gaping wide-eyed at the blue-green sprawl of the sea practically right up against their windows at high tide. Otabek doesn’t think he’s ever seen so much water in one place before.

The crash of the waves in the distance makes for good white noise while he sorts through the contents of their suitcase. Otabek doesn’t have much in the way of worldly possessions: a collapsible cauldron, a handful of crystals, his school spell books, which he mostly uses for pressing flowers.

There’s some other odds and ends--all the cords for his electronics tangled together on the flight over, yay--and he doesn’t notice anything amiss until the quiet settles in, and he realizes Yuri's stopped heckling the seagulls. 

“Yuri?”

The sounds of the beach are muted, just the faint wheel and call of birds on the shore. A car in the distance. The gentle crackle of sage burning on the porch. He tries again, the cold slide of fear breaking the words in his throat so they come out scratched and bruised. For this to be happening again so soon...

“Yuri?” 

The sun outside is barely hanging onto the horizon line, a small bright penny in the wishing well of the Atlantic. There are dark, blurry shapes darting in and out of the surf, and Otabek trips over himself twice trying to run in the shifting sand. 

Magic is a funny thing. Usually it's a spell, but a spell can be a poem, or a rhythm of movement, a sigh pitched just right into the wind so that it sounds like a song. Sometimes a song is a spell, other times a spell is a wordless sound--a feeling in search of a word. 

“Yura,” Otabek says, half a prayer half a vow. There’s a light sparking at his fingertips, spitting like a Roman candle on New Year's Eve. The light dances across his knuckles and pools in the palms of his hands. It hisses and sputters, painting the beach in shades of purple. 

He finds Yuri pinned down under an abandoned lawn chair, ears laid flat, tail bristling. Around him the crows--a murder, a group of crows is called a murder Otabek remembers--turn towards him in unison, their eyes a brilliant stoplight red in the dark. They watch as he approaches 

“Stay back,” Otabek shouts. The lightning in his hand is almost blinding now, arching high over his head, searching hungrily for a target. 

“Eight,” the crows murmur, passing the word back and forth softly, like a secret. “Eight, eight, eight.” 

The lights in the hotel flick on behind him, bleaching the sand a bright white. 

“Otabek?” Leo’s voice floats down to him. The lights of the hotels windows begin to flick on, one by one, squares of lights blooming across the sand. 

“Eight,” the crows hiss in warning. Their shadows writhe without a cover of darkness to hold them, and between one moment and the next they melt back into the night. 

“You’re okay,” Otabek cradles Yuri close. One curse on someone Otabek loves is already one curse too many. “You’re safe, you’re okay.”

“ _I'm_ okay?” Yuri hisses, and oh, he's pissed. “They knew, Beka. They kept saying--only eight left now. How do they know that?” He twists in Otabek's arms, eyes flashing. “They shouldn't know, nobody should.”

From a heavily warded pouch close to his chest Otabek pulls out a matchbook. Nine matches sit snugly in the lining, one of them burnt down to a blackened stub. 

They’re both shaking now. Otabek tucks the matches away and gathers Yuri in his sweatshirt. Yuri allows this, which Otabek knows to mean he's more scared than he lets on. 

“Stay or go?” Otabek says. As much as he'd like to pretend, there's always a choice to be made. He only hopes that this time they make the right one. “Up to you.”

Yuri sighs. For a cat he sounds very, very tired. “It's too dark to fly tonight. You've already warded the rooms?”

Otabek hums. He can hear Leo, concerned, drawing closer; they're out of time.

“Then we stay,” Yuri says, "and wait for them to try for Seven."


End file.
